'He's moving at a truly alarming speed': Trump propels US into authoritarianism

It reads like a checklist of milestones on the road to autocracy. A succession of opposition politicians, including Alex Padilla, a US senator, are handcuffed and arrested by heavy-handed law enforcement for little more than questioning authority or voicing dissent. A judge is arrested in her own courthouse and charged with helping a defendant evade arrest. Masked snatch squads arrest and spirit people away in public in what seem to be consciously intimidating scenes. The president deploys the military on a dubious legal premise to confront protesters contesting his mass roundups of undocumented migrants. A senior presidential aide announces that…